Primordial Black Holes and Cosmological Phase Transitions Report ...

List of Figures
1 The time evolution of the abundances of the light elements produced
during Primordial Nucleosynthesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2 The energy densities of matter and radiation as a function of the
scale factor R(t). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3 The inflaton potential in the case of chaotic inflation. . . . . . . . 16
4 The inflaton potential in the case of natural inflation. . . . . . . 16
5 The inflaton potential in the case of hybrid (double) inflation. . . 17
6 The scale factor during the QCD transition as a function of time. 29
7 The scale factor as a function of time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
8 The theoretical CMB anisotropy power spectrum. . . . . . . . . . 32
9 The Lyman α forest (quasar RDJ030117 + 002025) . . . . . . . . 34
10 The particle content of the SMPP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
11 Mass spectrum of supersymmetric particles and the Higgs boson
according to the SPS1a scenario. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
12 The effective number of degrees of freedom g(T ). . . . . . . . . . 58
13 QCD phase transition (schematic) diagram. . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
14 Naive phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. . . . . . . . 61
15 Sketch of a first–order QCD transition via homogeneous bubble
nucleation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
16 Behaviour of the temperature as a function of the scale factor
during a first–order QCD transition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
17 Thermodynamic state variables for a strong first–order phase
transition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
18 The Hubble rate H and the typical interaction rates of weak (Γw)
and electric (Γe) processes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
19 Sketch of a first–order QCD transition in the inhomogeneous Universe.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
20 Primordial gravitational waves from the QCD transition. . . . . . 69
21 The behaviour of the sound speed during the QCD transition as
a function of the scale factor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
22 The entropy density of hot QCD relative to the entropy density
of an ideal QGP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
23 Energy density and pressure as functions of T/Tc for the QCD
transition in LGT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
24 The square speed of sound as a function of T/Tc for the QCD
transition in LGT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
25 The behaviour of the sound speed as a function of T/Tc during
the QCD transition according to the Lattice model. . . . . . . . 76
26 The square speed of sound for the QCD Crossover. . . . . . . . . 77
27 The minimum value attained by the sound speed as a function of
the parameter ∆T (QCD Crossover). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
28 The beginning and the end of the QCD phase transition as a
function of the transition temperature (Bag Model and Lattice
Fit). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
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